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Media Resource Assignment 1

Franz Boas was born in an era where Western culture was considered superior to any other culture in the world. This idea propagated the exclusion of other cultures and the moral justification behind it. However, Franz Boas did not subscribe to this notion but instead worked to change this view. He works to develop scientific knowledge of people that would dismiss the idea that any culture was grander to another. This earned him the title father of American Anthropology. During his studies, Boas found that all people believed that their culture was superior to all others. This discovery contributed to his definition of cultural relativism, a theory which states that the only culture one has interacted with is their own. This definition made sense of why other cultures were inferior in the eyes of the West and explained their bias. His four field approach rejected the bias of unilineal social evolution. Social evolution defined universal evolutionary stages that classified some societies as barbaric, savage, and others civil. Boaz did not believe that Darwinian theory applied directly to culture and historical phenomena. Data he found contrasted every opinion held by social evolutionists or was a result of profound misrepresentation of data.

Media Resource Assignment 2

Franz Boas and Malinowski differed mostly on how they collected data and the varied methodologies they used in their studies. Although these two people shared views on the importance of collecting data, they differed on the methodology. Boas paid more attention to the history of a culture. He believed the recreation of a culture from a historical perspective properly explained the cultural phenomena. Malinowski, on the other hand, believed that the reconstruction of history was unnecessary and took the time off more important things. He believed living among people and engaging in their daily activities was the best way to explain a culture. Through experiencing a culture, a person could carry out an unbiased and totally impartial study of it. During the early stages of his career, Boas’ ideas on culture did not pay attention to the individual on the whole, which directly opposed Malinowski’s views. However, with time Boas added more importance to the individual in society. The most stand out the difference, however, was the American view fronted by Boas, which regarded culture from a historical perspective and reconstructed it hypothetically where there was no historical data. Malinowski’s view was associated with the British, viewed each culture as a functionally interrelated system, and considered social change as something to be studied by actual observation.

Media Resource Assignment 3

Marxist theory’s perspective on society is that of material structure and focuses on economic determinism while functionalism considers society a source of shared culture and cultural determinism. Marxism interprets culture as a tool for social control and a source of power for the ruling class. Functionalism, on the other hand, interprets culture as a way of institutionalizing communities into shared values and beliefs. Marxism is about benefiting the dominant class through capitalism. Functionalism believes socialization is a means by which people form a value consensus, creating an environment for social order and stability. French Structuralism was born from functionalism and fronted by Claude Levi-Strauss. Structuralism perceived the world as a logical pattern with a production of ideas and that the society created individuals and individuals did not create the society. Marxism, on the other hand, believed that structure was not similar to visible relations and expounded on the hidden logic.